Increasingly tough restrictions regarding coating effluents allowed to escape into the atmosphere have prompted considerable efforts to develop 100 percent reactive coatings, that is, liquid coating compositions that have no volatile components. In this type of coating, the reactive solvents are monomers that undergo reaction to become incorporated in the cured film. The cure or polymerization of these coatings is conveniently initiated by exposure of the applied coating to electron radiation or to ultraviolet light.
However, some of the coatings developed have had an undesirable high gloss for many applications. To lower the gloss value silica has been used as a flatting agent but in many instances, even a minimal amount of silica has resulted in an undesirable high increase in both the viscosity and thixotropy of the 100 percent solids coating composition. Many attempts have been made to obtain a lower gloss coating but to date this has not been successful without encountering the other undesirable effects.